Exponetic

Pure Potential

Pure Potential are a social enterprise that aims to help bright students from state schools attend some of the best UK universities and think seriously about some of the more important careers.

Exponetic have delivered a product that is responsible for a number of key revenue streams.

Working with partners in academia and business, Pure Potential host a number of events every summer at university campuses across the country. Students in years 12 and 13 are invited to attend the events which cover topics such as student finance, university life and career options.

Exponetic won a competitive pitch to rebuild the web site including a number of key new features. Based around the acronym P-U-R-E, the site was to include a Personal networking section, information on Universities, a jobs board for Recruitment, and an Events booking system.

Consultancy process

Working closely with Pure Potential Director Marc Zao-Sanders, the Exponetic team thoroughly reviewed the company's brief to arrive at a technical specification and information architecture document.

A key problem was how to integrate the four major areas of the site in terms of the user interface. During early discussions, the P-U-R-E acronym proved to be a strong identifier for the site sections and was therefore implemented in four main tabs.

Technical issues

As the site was effectively 4 applications, these had to be integrated together seamlessly. The application areas were:

• Fully bespoke content management system
• Events booking system
• Off-the-shelf social networking application
• Recruitment system with CV search and jobs board

Unified log-in

One of Pure Potential's key requirements was to have a single log in for the entire site. This required Exponetic to build a log in and registration system on top of the social networking application so that users could log in from any page of the site.

Bespoke CMS

During the planning phase, we conceived a site that used a system of ‘modules' – boxes of content down the left and right hand sides of the screen – to keep the user interested and present site highlights (these are shown in the screenshot at the top of the page).

We delivered a system for managing these content modules (for example, allocating them to certain sections and pages or adding randomisation) and then brought all the PP staff up to speed in a half-day training session. PP staff also have full control over adding, editing and removing pages as well as the ability to hide content from unregistered users. The admin area is shown below.

Events booking

Originally developed in-house, Exponetic overhauled and integrated PP's complex booking system in to the new site.

The application allows registered users of the PP site to sign up for events, and then evaluates whether they qualify for the scheme based on a number of criteria. Users then get an acceptance or rejection email. Then, closer to the event, the system allocates students to a number of available presentations based on their career and education preferences.

Social Networking

Following the surprising success of the forum on their original site, Marc and his team decided to add a fully-featured social networking system to the PP site. The idea was to encourage students to interact with one another online and to take advantage of the current boom in online networking.

Exponetic used an off-the-shelf solution to provide the core functionality, and integrated it into the rest of the site seamlessly. This was a great success, with over 10,000 members and 6,000 forum posts within the first quarter of the site going live.

Recruitment system

The recruitment system was designed to facilitate two types of searching:

• Students searching for jobs
• Employers searching for (headhunting) students

This unique approach was aimed to maximise the return from PP's unique user database and offer genuinely useful services to all stakeholders: helping students find temporary and permanent jobs and helping employers find the next generation of talent.

Outcomes

With their target audience almost by definition web-centric, Pure Potential's web site was always going to be at the centre of their business. Exponetic have delivered a product that is responsible for a number of key revenue streams, in an integrated and comprehensive web application.

Since its launch in the second quarter of 2007, the site has attracted record numbers of visitors and user feedback is consistently good.

Client perspective

"Having increased our numbers of clients and partners from 25 in 2006 to 60 in 2007 including a media partner, headline sponsor and eight leading universities, our very basic 2006 website needed a major overhaul.

"The complicated brief which involved a wide range of different functionality (social networking, online tests, careers library, events booking system, jobsboard) was sent out to literally hundreds of agencies. Almost all of these came back with questions / proposals that betrayed a worrying lack of project understanding. It was a huge relief to receive Exponetic's thorough proposal and after a meeting with would-be project manager and the MD Karl Bunyan, we were up and running.

"In addition to delivering an excellent site, Exponetic have shown great business understanding, recognise and deliver on user experience, have some exceptionally articulate programmers and accessible senior management.

"We are very happy with the site as have our users been and we are currently working with Exponetic on a series of development projects."

Marc Zao-Sanders

Director,

Pure Potential